“The science is settled” on the issue of “climate change,” declared NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, in introducing a special program promoting only one side of the issue with politicians who included former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Governor Jerry Brown.

Governor Brown even compared America’s challenge in fighting climate change to the challenge the country faced in World War II in defeating Nazi Germany.

“I would point to the fact that it took Roosevelt many, many years to get America willing to go into World War II and fight the Nazis,” Brown told Todd. “Well, we have an enemy, though different, but perhaps, very much devastating in a similar way. And we’ve to fight climate change. And the president’s got to lead on that.”

Brown did not specifically say who the “enemy” is now, but all the participants in Todd’s program clearly consider those who do not agree with them on the issue of climate change as either the enemy or perhaps collaborators. They often refer to those who do not believe that human industrial activity is having a significant impact on global warming as “deniers” — with an obvious allusion to the Holocaust.

As discomforting as it is to hear Democratic politicians such as Brown and Bloomberg to offer comparisons of today’s “climate change deniers” to Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists, it is not uncommon for such comparisons to Hitler to be made in U.S. political contests. But even beyond the climate change issue, Todd’s decision to not only take sides on the issue, but to declare the contrary position as illegitimate, powerfully illustrates an even larger reality: Todd and many other so-called journalists are not reporters, but seek to make sure one side wins.

“We’re not going to give time to climate deniers,” Todd explained. “The science is settled even if political opinion is not. We’re not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter and human activity is a major cause. Period.”

Despite years of “climate change” propaganda, a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll demonstrates that Americans remain deeply divided — largely along partisan lines — on the issue. Only 15 percent of Republicans are convinced that climate change is “serious,” requiring “immediate action,” but 70 percent of Democrats are convinced.

And Todd, hosting a news interview show, has made it clear that he not only favors one side of an issue that deeply divides Americans, but he does not view those who hold a different position than he holds on the issue as even legitimate. Their arguments should be ignored.

This is not surprising, as Todd is clearly on the Democratic Party team, even having worked in 1992 on the presidential campaign of Senator Tom Harkin, an extremely liberal Iowa Democrat. Even since taking over the Meet the Press program, Todd has continued to support Democrats. The Daily Caller has reported that Todd and his wife even hosted a dinner party in 2015 for the communications director of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign effort. Kristian Todd, his wife, is the co-founder of a political consulting firm, which supports many partisan Democrat campaigns or progressive issues.

Clearly, Todd may want us to think he is wearing the uniform of the umpire, but he is really ready to make a hit for just one team.

As Governor Brown’s allusion to the efforts of President Franklin Roosevelt to persuade Americans to get the country into the war against Nazi Germany demonstrates, liberals believe it is up to them to alter Americans’ opinion on climate change. Interestingly, Roosevelt was never able to convince Americans to go to war against Nazi Germany — Hitler declared war on the United States. War came to the United States on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. That did not put us into the war against Germany, at least not until Hitler decided to honor his alliance treaty with the Japanese and declare war on America. Roosevelt did not even ask for a declaration of war against Germany until they first declared war on the United States. Most historians who have studied this subject believe Congress would not have otherwise declared war on Germany.

If Rebecca Waiser is right, millions of Americans are about to be “disenfranchised” of their Social Security benefits. Waiser, a licensed tax attorney and certified financial planner writing for Fox Business, says the math is incontrovertible and irreversible.

According to the trustees running the program, Social Security will be forced to start cutting benefits by 2034, 15 years from now. According to Waiser the crisis will hit in three years.

Wrote Waiser:

Disenfranchisement … is defined as the state of being deprived or a right or privilege … [but, as] the Supreme Court ruled in the 1960 case Flemming v. Nestor … the receipt of payments from the program is not a “right,” even where the participant had paid into the system for years.

And since Social Security instead is a privilege, “the reality is that most Americans count on and expect that ‘their’ Social Security … will be there for them. But it will not.”

First, there is no money in the Social Security trust funds, just government IOUs: “There is no actual money in the fund, just the special-issue Treasury bonds, which are in fact government IOUs. The real surpluses have been used by the federal government as a funding source for many things.”

Translation: The payroll taxes received were spent by the government long ago. But now that the program’s benefits being paid out are greater than the payroll taxes it receives, those IOUs are being redeemed by the Treasury, thus adding to the federal government’s annual deficits.

And the demand for those benefits is about to explode. There’s a tsunami of Baby Boomers about to apply for them, wrote Waiser: “About 70 percent of the Boomers [approximately 76 million people] have not even begun to retire yet. Beginning in 2022 the bulk of that generation will retire [over the next] five to seven years.”

And when each person retires and starts to claim benefits, there’s a “double negative” hit to Social Security: he or she stops paying into the system and instead starts taking out of it. And, according to Waiser, there’s another problem: “the lower birth rates of Gen X and Millennials [those paying into the system that’s keeping it afloat] does not help.”

Waiser is out of solutions: “It is clear that the proverbial can cannot be kicked down the road any longer. The road is ending, and the cliff lies dead ahead just like the iceberg … for the Titanic.” She added, “We cannot borrow our way out. As I see it, it is a mathematical certainty that benefits will be cut … and taxes will go up.”

The tsunami to which Waiser refers will be even larger thanks not only to deficit spending by the federal government and its borrowing, but also to the interest costs in servicing that ever increasing debt. At about the time Waiser’s Baby Boom tsunami hits, the U.S. Treasury will be faced with making interest payments that exceed the country’s military budget. Somewhere along the way those investors, bond holders, and foreign central banks which have up until now been such willing buyers of U.S. Treasuries will turn off the tap.

All of which is likely to be a surprise to the average American worker. Last April Gallup interviewed 1,150 of them age 18 and up and learned about the fantasy land in which they live. According to Gallup more than half of them approaching retirement “project financial comfort in retirement” while nearly eight out of ten already retired “say they have enough money to live comfortably.”

Another Gallup poll conducted at the same time revealed that, on average, a worker approaching retirement plans to retire at age 66.

But the reality of the average recipient of Social Security retirement benefits shows a much different situation. According to the Social Security Administration, 61 percent of retired workers count on their Social Security check to provide at least half of their income. For unmarrieds, that figure jumps to 71 percent.

When that tsunami hits in 2022, it should be blindingly clear to even the densest politician that something will need to be done. He or she will be hearing from the voting bloc most intimately affected: the early Boomers already on Social Security, and the Silent/Greatest generation (71 and over). That bloc, according to Pew Research, is large and powerful, and will hardly stand by while their Social Security benefits are being threatened.

So the ultimate solution — benefit cuts and payroll tax increases — will fall where it always falls: on those in the system with no way to get out. As Waiser concluded: “the coming ‘disenfranchisement’ of Social Security [will deprive] Americans … of the privilege of the full benefit payments upon which they were counting. It’s no wonder that Congress has expressly reserved the right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of the Act.” (Emphsis added.)

The intergenerational conflict built into the failing Social Security system is about to heat up.

With only scant days left in the year, 2018 is set to become the first year since formal record keeping began in 1950, in which the United States has not endured even one “violent” tornado. Violent tornadoes are classified on the Enhanced Fujita Scale as being EF4 (winds of 166-200 mph) or EF5 (winds over 200 mph).

The previous low number of violent tornadoes reported was in 2005, with only one. The strongest tornado reported in all of North America this year was an EF4, which touched down in Manitoba in August. Only 12 EF3 tornadoes (136-165 mph) have touched down in the United States this year, also a record low.

The record low for tornadoes is not quite a sure thing as of yet, as severe thunderstorm activity will threaten parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee through Tuesday of next week.

Fatalities from tornadoes in the United States are at an all-time low this year as well, with only 10 deaths reported. In an average year, tornadoes kill 69 Americans. The deadliest year for tornadoes was reportedly 1925, when the Tri-State Tornado alone killed 695 people in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana.

The reasons for the lack of tornadoes this year are not completely known; however, “one key factor is high pressure tending to be more dominant than normal throughout peak season this past spring,” noted Ian Livingstone, a forecaster for Capital Weather Gang. High pressure systems generally tend to lead to blue skies and fewer clouds and storms.

“This was particularly so during April and May when tornado numbers were below to well below normal,” Livingstone added.

But with climate change, aren’t we supposed to see more violent and extreme weather?

The year 2018 is unusual for tornado activity, to be sure, but NOAA data suggests that the United States has been seeing a downward trend since formal record-keeping began in 1950. A NOAA chart appears to show that, despite what climate alarmists tell us, there is no correlation between severe weather (tornadoes, at least) and slightly warmer temperatures since 1950.

The lack of severe tornadoes over the past few decades has long been a thorn in the side of climate alarmists. Way back in 2012, James Taylor of the Spark of Freedom Foundation wrote, “Tornadoes are becoming less frequent and less severe as our planet modestly warms. Yet global warming alarmists focus attention on the few tornadoes that still do occur and say that global warming is causing these increasingly rare tornadoes.”

This year in particular, climate alarmists are blaming current weather events such as Hurricanes Florence and Michael on global warming. A new climate discipline known as “attribution science” is helping climate alarmists and the media connect current weather events to global warming — something that was “forbidden” previously since climate and weather are not the same thing.

These new “attribution scientists” were quick to blame climate change for the Atlantic hurricanes, Tropical Storm Olivia which hit Hawaii in September, the Japanese heatwave, and the California wildfires. And the mainstream media obligingly reported it.

But these “attribution scientists” and most media outlets are conspicuously absent in the study of tornadoes in connection with climate change. The fact that tornadoes are becoming less frequent rather than more frequent flies in the face of their contention that global warming will lead to more severe weather.

Thus far in 2018, climate alarmists such as carbon credit salesmen Al Gore are mum on what they think about the lack of tornadoes. Since a good part of climate alarmism plays up an increase in extreme weather due to warmer temperatures, their silence on the absence of tornadoes speaks volumes.